


Last Christmas I gave you my heart

by TheFierceBeast



Category: Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Surgery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 09:46:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFierceBeast/pseuds/TheFierceBeast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Original prompt:</p>
<p>Nathan repossesses his first organ. It's easier than he thought it would be.</p>
<p>•Het and slash and gen are all grand and I would be happy to receive any/all of these.</p>
<p>•I love me some kink, so gimme gimme if you're into it, but please no blood, urine, feces, or animals.</p>
<p>•I love holiday stories, so if you feel the urge to set your story around Christmas or Hanukkah or Yule, that would thrill me beyond measure.</p>
<p>•Angst is good, fluff is also good.</p>
<p>•Much love for romance and action/adventure! And also quiet, introspective character pieces.</p>
<p>•I'd prefer no crossovers, but if you have a REALLY GREAT (TM) idea for a crossover, I will love it, I'm sure!</p>
<p>•I have learned to love the AU. Hit me with your best shot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Christmas I gave you my heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GVSpurlock](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GVSpurlock/gifts).



It was the smell he always remembers the most. Not the stench of punctured bowels or that tang of black blood - the deep blood, from further inside a vital body than should ever meet the air - but the smell of rubber. That’s what wakes him from nightmares when he sleeps, and drags him waking into nightmares every time he recites his comforting lies and slips away to work. The antiseptic rubber scent of his uniform, so close to the old familiar smell of healing, so close to the perfume of pacifiers and feeding bottles: that’s what sticks with him, from the first time.

The first time.   
The first time, in the end, was easier than Nathan expected it would be. He’d worried for weeks, to the point of sickness: but what was the point of it all, if it resulted in sickness? He had to stay strong, to close himself off, for the sake of the only thing he had left. The one thing he was doing this to protect; the only thing in the world left worth protecting.   
Even if he wasn’t sure that he wasn’t the thing she needed protecting from.  
The first time, Shilo was just a baby. He could afford a nurse, but some fear in him refused to let anyone else care for her, some ungrounded fear that whispered even as it insisted, that she’d be safer with anyone else but him. Considering his new career, this was a problem. He stroked the downy black of her hair, kissed the top of her head and smelled the faintest tang of the sedative on her sleeping breath. But he would be quick; he’d be back before she woke, before anything terrible had time to occur. Leaving the house, he shot a pleading look at every portrait of Marni; _keep her safe._ The last held her arms out to him, seeming to understand, but even if some part of her looked out from that frame then he doubted she’d glean much of his expression through the gleaming visor of his helmet.

The street was dark and the buildings leaned over on either side as if inspecting him, this dark figure slipping between the shadows with the pretence of being unafraid. The act became a reality with shocking quickness. It’s easy to be brave behind a mask, especially when that mask causes all those who cross your path to flee with wide eyes. He checked his case files: the dim streetlight shining through them made it difficult to read, but he was definitely on the correct street. The man’s photo showed someone young, trying to fight back a smile for his official I.D. as if being given his new lease of life made it impossible not to show his - what? Happiness? Relief? The emotions seemed alien concepts then to Nathan, but one thing he and the man both knew was you must retain a neutral expression on formal identification. Nathan’s lips behind his mask peeled back in a humourless grin. This repossession would be fatal: good. He’d feared more than anything his first being something the debtor might survive. Even without anaesthetic and aftercare, it happened. It had happened to him since, and he’d passed those survivors blank-eyed on the street: of course they’d never recognised him in his civilian clothes, except in his nightmares. They recognised him in his nightmares. No, he thought it would be hard to kill on purpose, but it turned out that it was so, so much easier than killing unintentionally: easier to perform a repossession that would result in death than risk facing their later judgement. And in his determination to protect Shilo, to keep her safe and alive, he had to face the fact that - _no_. She would never find out. That’s why he did - does - the damned job; to buy Largo’s silence. She would never find out, never grow to hate him. His one reason for living: all this was for her.  
And if Marni was dead, then why did anyone deserve to live?

He turned a corner and reached what seemed to be a dead end. There were a lot of dead ends in the city. Searching for a door, he could find none, but there were stacked boxes piled against the fence that was topped with sagging chain-link: he climbed on top of one, checked beyond and then, satisfied, dropped his bag on the other side and vaulted over. At the noise of his Gladstone landing, he heard a scuffling in the alleyway beyond, like rats running from a terrier. _Just_ like that: he allowed himself a tight smile. Once past the slight protection of the false cul-de-sac, there was nowhere to run and when Nathan had climbed over, he was still in time to see a figure diving into an unlit doorway.   
This must be the correct address.  
He felt less fear with every heavy step up the staircase. It was as if he were watching himself, remotely, portraying a role in some twisted movie. He tracked the man through the maze of corridors, cramped stairwells reeking of waste, suspended ceilings falling in bulges of water-stained polystyrene. None of the doors the man slammed behind him slowed Nathan a fraction, until finally they came to an apartment entrance. He heard the rattle of keys from the other side, but didn’t even slow as he approached the door and kicked it open with one solid boot aimed squarely at the lock. The wood splintered; little more than rotten ply on a frame, certainly nothing to keep out the monsters of the city. And this new monster was their King.   
Stepping over the threshold, Nathan gave his first pause. Whatever he’d expected to see here, whatever squalid Zydrate den full of bare mattresses and graffiti, this was not it. It certainly wasn’t an affluent dwelling by any stretch of the imagination, but it wasn’t a slum, either. There was a television set for starters, and a couch draped in a blanket to hide the stuffing leaking from the split upholstery. Evidence of effort. Evidence of a _life_. There was even a table with two chairs set up in front of the tiny, soot-streaked window and on top of that table was a little tinsel Christmas tree, wrapped in blinking rainbow lights. It was behind the table that the man was cowering. Nathan’s stomach clenched, but he had nothing left to bring up. The man was a defaulter, a debtor, a thief. The man was already less than two column inches in the back pages of the Evening Slice. He deserved it. In Nathan’s head, a chorus of voices seemed to sing ‘Remember what you did to Marni’ - if Marni was dead, this creature didn’t deserve to live, this organ donor, this oxygen thief-  
“Please. Please don’t. I’ll do anything.”  
Nathan kicked one of the chairs to one side, pushed the table away. The tinsel tree fell over but the lights kept blinking, cheerful as a heart monitor. The man held his hands up before round eyes. Nathan hefted his bag onto the table with a thud, opened it and selected a knife, keeping one eye on the man, who seemed, however, beyond running. “Please, please, please,” his words fell over themselves on the way out of his mouth. Nathan reached down and bunched the man’s tshirt in one hand, heaving him to his feet. He was unsurprisingly light, bending backwards over the table easily as a doll, as Nathan cut up the front of his shirt with little regard to the skin beneath.   
The scar from his surgery was old and well healed, and the only one visible on his torso - also unexpected. Reaching into his bag for more tools, Nathan fumbled his rib cutters, nearly piercing the clear plastic organ refrigeration bag he’d laid out in readiness. But when he looked back it wasn’t Marni’s face he saw, it wasn’t even Rotti’s, the smirking, blackmailing swine. It was his own, superimposed over the debtor’s terrified features.   
“I need your heart,” he heard himself say, in a quiet, reasonable tone. “You see, mine was stolen from me and I need a substitute.” He pictured it, still beating, the Geneco barcode tattooed on the slick red surface. Real, alive: worthless.  
“Please,” the man gasped. The first touch of the scalpel left a thin line, welling bright beads. Nathan would have to get faster - would get faster - but it was his first attempt and, besides, he wanted to make that face pay. “Please, I’ll do anything. I can pay!”  
“Then why didn’t you?” It was the first and only time he ever spoke to one of them. “You have things here you could have sold,” Nathan glanced around the shabby little apartment. “Why did you take the risk?”  
“I never thought it would be me,” said the man. Nathan brought his hand down and an arc of such jewel red that it was almost beautiful fanned across the windowpane behind them. The blinking lights on the tinsel tree stuttered and went out.  
“No. Neither did I.” Nathan said.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I really hope you enjoyed this, as I'm aware it's pretty depressing and probably not the holiday-setting you had in mind (!) but was the only one of your fandoms I recognised so I hope I did it justice. Also aware it has blood, but I think that's OK considering the scenario and the fact it's not blood-play? I think it definitely ticks the angst boxes though..! Anyway, happy holidays ;-) x


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